


you always were

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how James T. Kirk grows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you always were

**Author's Note:**

> wow this turned into an intensely personal piece. /shakes fist at midwestern farm culture...
> 
> anyways, if the tags weren't warning enough **WARNING** for brief moments of child abuse, and a very blink and you'll miss it moment of suicidal ideation. 
> 
> title comes from [this](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=911) a softer world comic.

Jim is young when he first realizes that he's not like other kids. It's starts with his mother. When he's six, he thinks she's the coolest mom ever because she's in space all the time with Starfleet. Plus, she's an engineer so she keeps the ship running right, which is awesome. But the other moms and the grandmoms in town all tut disapprovingly and say how terrible it is that Winnie's leaving her two boys with their step-father. Frank is a good man, but they really do need two parents, especially since Frank isn't George. Jim doesn't get it at first. He  _has_  two parents. Just because he writes his mom more than he sees her doesn't mean she's not around.  
  
His hobbies are the next clue. He reads a lot as a kid. Everywhere he goes, he's got his nose in a PADD and sometimes, if he's good, one of Grandpa Tiberius' antique books he left behind when he died. It drives Frank up a wall and makes everyone except his teacher, Ms. Connolly, frown at him. "He's got his head in the clouds," they say when he can hear them. "He's going to be a lazy one," they say when they think he can't. It doesn't sit right with him. His insides twist up all funny, and he frowns until he thinks his face is really going to stick that way.  
  
Sam sighs and smooths out the wrinkle in Jim's brow with his thumb. "Don't listen to them," he says, "They don't know anything. That's part of the problem."   
  
Like Jim, Sam is much too smart for his nine years, but no one says those things about  _him_. So Jim watches his brother to try and figure it out. It's not as hard as he thought it would be to discover what it is, exactly, that makes everyone like him. He's good with his hands, and he's always  _doing_ something. Frank is the same way. He gets up early to work on the farm and it's all physical, manual labor. Jim likes working with his hands. He likes cleaning, and he knows he's a little weird because of that. He likes running through the fields and playing with Mrs. Hoffmann's dog. He  _really_ likes taking the things he's learning about and putting them into practice, like with the bottle rockets Ms. Connolly helped him make. But he also likes reading more than anyone else he knows.  
  
He's different. And he thinks that if he can't make everyone in Riverside stop saying bad stuff about his mom, then he can at least get them to stop saying bad stuff about him. Jim's smart, and he knows it, so he makes sure to study hard and get the best grades he can. But he also starts doing more around the farm. He weeds, and cleans, and starts mowing Mrs. Hoffmann's lawn once a week. Suddenly everyone loves him. Everyone except Frank, that is.

Sam has never liked Frank, which Jim thinks he understands. Sam remembers their dad a little. It makes sense that he feels like dad is being replaced. Sam and Frank fight a lot. But it's not until Jim starts trying to be good that Frank gets angry with him. At first, he thinks he's doing something wrong. Then, when Frank gets drunker than usual one night and starts yelling, he realizes that Frank isn't smart at all and hates that a "snot-nosed kid" is smarter than him. There's a bitter, biting comment about his mother too that Jim has to think on before he can understand it.  
  
When Jim started doing really well, the messages from his mother started coming in less and less frequently. Sometimes Jim would write her and to tell her all about what he's been doing, and that's when he gets long responses. But other than that, he hardly hears from her anymore. Frank, it seems, blames him for that. Jim thinks he's really stupid for thinking that when it's obviously his mom that's making the decision not to write, and not Jim. He gets slapped so hard his head whips to the side for that one, which just starts another yelling match between Sam and Frank.  
  
From then on, Jim tries to keep his head down. He stays out of Frank's way as much as possible, but it's hard to when they live in the same house. "You're no one," becomes Frank's favorite thing to say to Jim. Sam says one time when Jim's nine that it has something to do with their mom chasing their dad off in space, but that doesn't make any sense. George Kirk is dead. Maybe if he wasn't, though, none of this would be happening to them.  
  
Thoughts like that come to Jim more and more often as he gets older. So do the guts-twisted-up feelings that he gets when Frank yells at him. It's worse than when the old ladies used to gossip, because Frank is supposed to be a parent to him. His opinion is supposed to matter, and he's supposed to look out for Jim. The frustration and anger and resentment build up in him until one day, when Jim is eleven, he snaps.

Sam's running away from home for the second time, and he's washing the inside of a car that's not Frank's, no matter how often he says it is. When the keys fall onto the seat, Jim doesn't think twice about starting the car. He's just so... so  _something_  that he wants to wipe the car off the face of the Earth. And maybe take himself with it, though he's not too sure about that one once he really thinks about it.  
  
The quarry is just a few miles from the farm, so he drives as fast as he possibly can to it. It should, hypothetically, make the chances of him getting caught go down. As he races down the dirt road, the feel of the wind in his hair and the old music blaring make him laugh. It's like nothing he's ever felt before. Doing something wrong for once--sticking it to Frank and his father feels surprisingly  _good_.

And then the cops come. Jim manages to drive the car into the quarry without killing himself, but he gets arrested. Frank, ass that he is, lets him spend a few nights in juvenile lock-up. It's his mom who finally comes to get him. She's got an exasperated frown on her face, but she's  _here_ for the first time in what feels like forever, so Jim only listens with half an ear as she tells him he's going to have to go to court, and what was he  _thinking_?   
  
In the end, he's sentenced to community service on one of the colonies and Frank has to pay a hefty fine for trying to sell a car that belongs to Winona, not him. The good Lieutenant Commander Kirk chews him up one side and down another for trying it too. When she leaves, Jim doesn't even try to hide the laughter. Frank finally got what was coming to him. But, since Sam is at a friend's for the next however long, there's no one there to hide Jim from Frank's anger. It's mostly yelling, but the one shove sends him into the china cabinet and leaves him was a few nasty bruises. All Jim can think is that community service is really just going to be a vacation away from the crap that's home.  
  
He's wrong. Tarsus IV is the tenth circle of hell.

It's actually pretty alright at first. Jim's already used to working hard, and there's people here who actually appreciate smarts the way they never did back in Iowa. Governor Kodos is weird, but seemingly a cool guy who checks in on Jim every so often and wants to hear what he's working on. It's more than he's gotten in years. Then the fungus comes and the famine hits. Jim gets used to the feeling of hunger in the pit of his stomach. He learns to get used to groups of colonists getting rounded up and shot. He learns to get used to the screams and the smell of phaser-burnt flesh. By the time Starfleet comes to get them, he's all skin and bones and trauma.   
  
His mother takes him back to Iowa and it's... hard. It's hard to not hide food from his family. It's hard to talk to the therapist, so he just stops trying. Winona and Sam stick around for a little while, but eventually it's just him and Frank again. And Jim is so angry all the time. He's angry at Kodos for being a genocidal scumbag. He's angry at his mother and his brother for leaving him. He's angry at Frank for not even trying to be understanding. He's angry at his father for dying, because if he hadn't been a martyr, none of this would've happened.   
  
Mrs. Hoffmann's daughter offers him a job when he's thirteen, working with the horses she owns. It's soothing in a way nothing has been since Tarsus. It calms him down. He's settled in a way he thought he never might be again. And Mary  _gets it_. She's smart, like him, but she's not doing anything with her incredibly mind for chemistry and philosophy. When Jim asks her why not, she shrugs.

"Mom and Dad never really understood, and they needed someone to look after the horses. Being smart isn't a bad thing, but nobody here needs it. Physical labor is hard work is _life_." She looks up at the sky, shielding her eyes from the sun. "Everyone's got their place here, Jimmy. Sometimes we're suited for it and sometimes we're not. But we're here, so we deal with it."  
  
Something about that rubs Jim the wrong way, but he doesn't say that to her. If he's honest with himself, he's too scared that Mary will tell him he can't work with the horses anymore if he does. It turns out to be a moot point, because Mary and her father get into a car crash and die. Mrs. Hoffmann sells all but two of the horses, and she can take care of those ones herself. It's then that Jim decides nothing can ever go right for him.  
  
Getting older just makes things harder. The anger at everything never really leaves, it just festers like an open wound. Winona's correspondence comes less and less often. Jim's fourteen when Sam fucks off to god only knows where. For the longest time, he doesn't even know if his brother is alive, but then he gets word that he's in love and trying to move to a colony to be with his girlfriend. Frank dies of alcohol poisoning, which serves the bastard right. It also leaves Jim with the Kirk farm, since neither Winona or Sam are coming for it. Everyone in Riverside seems to think that the sixteen year old will just somehow be able to step up to the plate and work the way his step-father did.  
  
Jim says screw that, drops out of school, and starts working as a dishwasher at a diner. It's a sucky job and he gets fired after he gets in a fight with one of the busboys. His mother sends him a very angry letter. But it's too little too late. Jim has discovered that some part of him likes the thrill of the fight. It's an outlet for his anger and it's  _fun_  in a way he never expected violence to be. Before he knows it, a pattern forms. He works a few dead-end jobs for a month or two and saves up money so he'll be okay for the few months he'll be unemployed. All the while he's getting drunk and high and laid and into all kinds of fights. He learns how to ride a motorcycle one night when a few college guys decide to race through hick-town. Which, of course, gets him arrested.  
  
Just enough of his time to be classified a significant amount is spent in prison. He gets a few drunk and disorderlies, a few charges of possession, a few battery charges, a few DUIs. Most of them don't stick, but they all go on his record. Eventually, he gets his GED. Takes a few aptitude tests for shits and giggles. There's a few he does while drunk, and the gorgeous blonde proctor seems flabbergasted that he manages to still get genius level scores while completely smashed. He takes her to a motel and breathes theorems and poetry in her ear while she gasps and claws at his back. It's fun until he realizes she wants to fix him up and taken him home to her mother. Fuck that noise, he says, and he never sees her again.  
  
He's nineteen when they build the shipyard. It's a Kelvin thing. They're going to build the 'Fleet's flagship in Riverside in honor of George Kirk's heroic sacrifice. Jim laughs, gets drunk, and rages at his father's empty grave. It's another night in lock-up for him. His mother has stopped trying, and most people in Riverside give him the stink-eye unless they're in a bar. He grins at them all lopsidedly and thinks  _What the hell did you think would happen when you all decided who I should be_?  
  
And then the cadets come. It sucks the first few times because he makes the mistake of telling some of them his last name and then everyone wants to know why he's not in Starfleet. He tells them exactly why. "Because it killed my father, and fucked over my mother, and generally is a giant steaming pile of shit."

He gets his nose and two ribs broken that night. It's marginally better the third time cadets come and he gets the shit beat out of him just for being a townie who hit on someone instead of saying bad things about Starfleet. But Christopher fucking Pike screws all that up when he gives Jim a challenge.  
  
Because it's not just a challenge. It's an out. "Settle," he says. "Meant for something better. Something special," hey says.

Jim's chest aches. There is nothing he wants more in the world than to get out of fucking Iowa. He hates it there. He hates that no one appreciates intellect. He hates that he can't do things he enjoys without getting glared at every time he leaves the house. Which, okay, is somewhat understandable since his idea of fun is illegal sometimes. But getting drunk and getting laid practically make you the spawn of Satan in a this town.   
  
He drives to the edge of the shipyard and just looks at what's one day going to be the  _Enterprise_. She's a beautiful ship. Even if Jim hates that Starfleet took so much from him, he can admire what comes out of it. Good ships, interesting papers, medical advances, new discoveries... He remembers when he was little and he thought going into space with Starfleet was the coolest and his mom was better than any other moms for being up in the stars. And he thinks that maybe Starfleet took his dad, but Iowa took  _him_. As he sits there staring at that ship he thinks,  _I want me back_.   
  
So he gets on the shuttle and plans to be on the  _Enterprise_  once she's finished. He's going to be himself. He's not going to apologize for it. And he's going to be the best damn Starfleet officer anyone has ever seen, and he's going to be on the fucking flagship because he is meant for something better than this dead end town.   
  
He's never going to let anyone tell him otherwise.


End file.
